MSWord Files = 0kb

[cesar]

Hi everyone
Has been a loong time since my las post.
I need some help with MsWord, anytime the user save his docs, (file--->save as) it "seems" to work, but when we see it in the folder where was saved, windows says the file has 0 kb. I tested creating another file, doing the same procedure (file-->saves as-->xxx.doc) and nothing, no data, but when i save it as rtf, it works.
I've been googling a little bit:
pptp://www.google.cl/search?hl=es&q=word+files+0kb&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
and most forums say it can be a virus, but i ever heard about a virus to do that... maybe its possible, but i think its a word problem.
Tomorrow i'll try the "Repair" option... but any ideas are accepted.
Thank you.

 

[Xander]

Most users have never even heard of "Save As" in my experience, despite it being right next to "Save".

Is he opening a pre-existing .doc, editing, and then saving? With that having a 0kb size?

What happens if you take a, say, 32kb .doc, open it, make some token change (e.g. space+backspace) and then hit Save? Do you end up with a 0kb doc or 32kb?

Besides a Repair, another thing in my when-in-doubt category is to delete the normal.dot file. I've seen it crash Word often enough (not this problem, but what the heck).

 

[iisjman07]

My first suspicion was that it's malware related. Manually check for malware and scan before attempting a repair (or even reinstall) of office

 

[cesar]

Most users have never even heard of "Save As" in my experience, despite it being right next to "Save".

Is he opening a pre-existing .doc, editing, and then saving? With that having a 0kb size?

What happens if you take a, say, 32kb .doc, open it, make some token change (e.g. space+backspace) and then hit Save? Do you end up with a 0kb doc or 32kb?

Besides a Repair, another thing in my when-in-doubt category is to delete the normal.dot file. I've seen it crash Word often enough (not this problem, but what the heck).

Thanks for response.
I apologize for not giving more information about the problem, i was in a hurry.
Today i came back to see the problem. I did your suggestions opening a pre-existing file and it worked, then create another one and nothing, no data. Unfortunelly, using the "repair" option, was not advisable, the office disks where lost...
Finally, after a lot of tests with openoffice, i ran kaspersky AV 2010 fullscan, and found 128 threats. after an hour, i restarted the machine and the problem was gone.
Sadly, between all the threats kaspersky found i'll never know wich them was causing all that trouble.
I let the user work as any normal day, and there were no errors.
I feel a little confuse, but i'll still watching that PC. I have the feeling that something is not going well.
It was a machine with Windows XP SP3, MS Office 2002, Kaspersky 2010.
Thank you all.

 

[Xander]

Thanks for the followup. Glad to hear Kaspersky did its job.
Weird symptom, though; I don't think I've ever heard of malware acting like this.

 

[iisjman07]

128 infections and this was the only symptom? Did you check the task manager process list?